


Excerpts from Infinity Mechanism

by Quandrant



Category: Original Work
Genre: A bit like a HS fanfic, Gen, House of Leaves and Homestuck influenced this, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:25:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8470321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quandrant/pseuds/Quandrant
Summary: Exactly what the title says, excerpts from "Infinity Mechanism". I'll probably put up the actual story sometime in the future, but for now, you guys and gals can soak in these short chapters. Enjoy!





	1. Important Letter on the Oval Office Desk, Edited for Clarity

9/16/2086

Dear Mr. President,

We have not performed the Scratch yet, as doing so would rip apart the fabric of reality and smash it back together in the timespan of two minutes. We will soon, but only when you give us the command.

The Scratch Construct, dubbed the Metronomic Glacier, is an extremely large Metronome encased in a glacier standing over 10 feet tall, with the capacity to change it’s own frequency higher or lower. We have observed that the Metronome is almost always ticking at the frequency of a clock (~60 BPM). However, before large worldwide events (like a worldwide holiday like Christmas) the Metronome would start to tick very quickly, nearly exceeding ~200 BPM (estimated, because touching the Metronome could have disastrous results).

After the worldwide event (like when the entire world is mourning after a violent shooting), the Metronome’s BPM would drop under 40 BPM.

We can conclude the beats of the Metronome must be tied with the emotions of the human population. Surprise, shock, and/or happiness makes the Metronome faster. Sadness, grief, and/or lethargy would make the Metronome slower. Note that these fluctuations are very minor. 

Attempting to touch the Metronomic Peninsula would either do two things to the person-- a) it would whisk them away to another place about ~85 kilometers away from the Metronome or b) force them into another universe. If the affected person suffers from ‘b’, then the only way of contacting them is through an IM or IRC client, such as Discord, Kiwi, or (more commonly) Pesterchum.

 

So why should we perform the Scratch?

Well, there’s two reasons. One, Earth’s lifespan is steadily reaching it’s end. The Sun has been observed these past three millennia, and it shows that the Sun is going to collapse. Normally, this shouldn’t happen-- we should have at least two more billion years left.

But something out there forced itself into the Sun, decreasing its’ lifespan dramatically. We don’t know what the “something out there” is, but it’s havoc could mean the end of the rest of the human population. Our interstellar journeys have been successful, but we cannot reach them because we have exhausted our finite resources on Earth.

The other reason is that the continents are moving. They have been moving quite a bit these few millennia, but we have never stopped and noticed. North America is going to collide into Eurasia  _ very _ soon, and there is no way of reversing it.

 

It is highly recommended we scratch. A scratch is a hard reboot of the universe, to create more favorable conditions after the scratch.

However, because the scratch is hard reboot, then our memories and history will be wiped away out of existence, replaced by something new.

 

To combat this memory/history wipe, we need to kill ourselves. We have found out that dream bubbles exist, and we go there when we sleep. We don’t remember our dreams because the dream bubble collapses when we wake up.

However, if you’re dead, that is a different story. The dream bubbles are very stable when we are dead, and they do not collapse. Ever.

So, we should simply just form a virus that kills the person immediately and self-destructs itself after it’s job is done.

We already formed such a virus, and are releasing it at this very moment. Sorry about that.

Once we are all dead, there will be one person left. We are still choosing the person. That person will have an immunity to the virus, and will be the last one standing. The immune person will initiate the scratch, kill themselves, and go to the dream bubble to meet with us. The scratch will take effect, and Earth and it’s universe will be wiped away in a flash.

We scratch the universe by manually tweaking the metronome so the BPM will reach infinity. We can do this because the sliding weight has a setting of infinity. We push it down, the vibrations make the Earth shake, and the entire universe is scratched.

 

We know it’s scary, Mr. President. But you must be brave for your nation.

 

We’ll see you on the other side.

 

Sincerely,

Azalea Megido and the rest of the Metronomic Glacier Crew


	2. Alpha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ambrose Dziewonski and Azalea Montague prepare to reboot the universe. Read their final moments here, before they get wiped from existence.

~~You are now a teenager from a parallel timeline, commenting on this story, looking at two planets, one green, the other pink through the eyes of Ambrose Dziewonski.~~

 

~~You are Rogue Strider, the voice in Ambrose’s head.~~

 

Ambrose Dziewonski looks at two small planets in front of him, one lime green, the other a hot pink. ~~Your face curls into a small smile when you see the green planet. You’re not sure if you even have a face anymore, because you’re just a disembodied presence, floating around Ambrose’s head. Nevertheless, you’ve always liked green, after all.~~   His face grimaces in disgust when he sees the green one. Blech. ‘Too much green can destroy your brain,’ he thinks. He’s had enough of this green now, taunting him, waiting for him to snap and tear the planet in half (which he _can_ do).

Ambrose takes a deep breath, then calms himself. What use is getting mad over a simple color, comprised of blue and yellow? It’s not very logical. His head turns over to Azalea, also hovering in her planet’s orbit.

 

Azalea Montague stares at her planet, a serene expression on her face. Unlike Ambrose’s beautiful, shimmering, emerald green planet, she has a planet with pixie stick pink splattered all over the surface. Her face twists into a frown when she sees the neon pink. She’s always liked pixie sticks, but this color is...unsettling. In the corner of her eye, she sees Ambrose touching down on the surface of the green planet. Azalea also drifts down towards the surface of the pink planet, and looks left, right, top, and bottom. Nothing. She scours the entire surface with her powers, but finds nothing. Just flat, smooth pink land. No liquid. No air. Just pink, everywhere. Disturbing pink. Disturbing loneliness.

 

~~You wonder how the voice inside Azalea’s head, Maid, is doing. You hope she’s okay, but you know, deep inside yourself, that your beloved sister is gone. Maid is simply a shadow of what she used to be, with no chances of recovery. Oh well. The timeline hopping was worth it, but…at the cost of your sister? Hell no.~~

 

Ambrose, after scouring the area for four hours, gives up and flies upward to meet Azalea. He thought that he would find something by now, but no. Time to go to another planet, then. There was nothing on his planet.

 

Azalea, on the other hand, was already in space, looking at Ambrose flying up towards her. ~~You remember how Megido wouldn’t teleport you around, as she liked your frustration of trying to reach her. You try to smile to yourself.~~ Azalea doesn’t like to wait, so she teleports him to her with a snap of her fingers.

 

“Why do you always teleport me without asking?” Ambrose asked her curiously.

“Well, it’s because we need to hurry up, as you said before! I’m doing the door this time, Rogue takes too slow.” Azalea replied, annoyed.

“Umm...okay, then.”

“Great.” she holds out her fingers in a rectangle shape, and carefully expands. When the door is in view, she expands it to it’s full size. Azalea opens the door mentally. She’s too lazy to use her hands and turn the doorknob. The door swings open, revealing the all too familiar, dark corridor.

Ambrose walks through the doorway, and Azalea follows suit. Ambrose closes the door, but is interrupted by something.

 

TICK.

 

~~You remember, in your timeline, there was never any “tick”, nothing at all. Just dull, empty silence filling your ears **because there was never any Metronome.** You think the Ambrose and Azalea of this timeline might have a good chance of successfully rebooting the universe! ~~

 

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That tick, it sounded just like…”

“A metronome…” Ambrose’s eyes widen with realization, and he whips the door back open. He goes through the doorway, and fly around in orbit around the green planet. He wasn’t using his powers correctly, that’s why.  ~~Good. He knows that the Metronome is here, and is going back to find the pieces, you think. Of course, you can't really think, but you exploit the powers of the Author to suit you. You're not quite sure how you acquired the editing powers, but you like them anyway.~~

 

~~Maybe you can save Maid. No, impossible. The real author locked that part. You can't change the fact that Maid, your beloved sister, is broken. Now it's up to you to fix this.~~

 

When Ambrose goes back through the doorway, Azalea has no choice but to follow suit. She dives towards the pink moon, and lands on the surface with a dull “thunk”, similar to the sound when you press a key on a Topre switch keyboard. Azalea uses her aura, and calls on her tendrils. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Your sister, Azalea Megido, _did_ think of this before, in another timeline, but that timeline was scrapped in favor of this one. You had to save the alpha, and that involved detaching yourselves from the doomed timeline.

Ambrose finds the pieces of the the metronome in the timespan of exactly three minutes.

Azalea finds the pieces of the metronome in about six minutes. Ambrose is waiting for her, in the pink moon’s orbit. Azalea teleports to him, and he gives her all his pieces-- a winding key, a sliding weight, and the beat selector.

The duo are doing swimmingly, until a bomb materializes in front of both of them suddenly. They only have five minutes to construct the Metronome, until the bomb kills them both. Ambrose uses his time powers and slows down the bomb, while Azalea shrinks it. The two work faster now, more frantic than before. Fingers flying, arms twisting, mechanisms of the Mechanism snapping, pulling, and being shoved.

 

~~Ah yes, the bomb. You and Megido never really cared too much about the bomb, as there was never any Metronome to begin with.~~

~~Your Metronome was already dust when you both got there. You were too late, too late, no chances of fertility. You try to force yourself to believe this was a doomed timeline, you tell yourself it’s just another one of them that branched off from the alpha, but you knew that your timeline is the alpha, the fucking alpha, and you had no way to save it, unless you enter the other universe, the one that can still bear fruit.~~

 

~~You hate everything. You hate your life, your shattered dreams and hopes, and above all, yourself. Because you failed, you took too long.~~

 

Ambrose looks at her pile, which had the hook, scale, and pendulum. Ambrose slides the weight onto the pendulum, and places it on the scale gently. Azalea hooks the weight, scale, and pendulum onto the base of the metronome.

Ambrose transfers a bit of his powers onto the metronome key. Azalea pulls a tendril off of her aura and wraps it around the key, where it pulses a neon green and red.

Azalea pushes the key into the ancient metronome, and it begins to turn on it’s own. She knows that the key will turn itself automatically when the Metronome’s coil is getting loose. It just needed a little bit of magic.

A tick-tick-tick-tick sound fills Ambrose’s ears. The BPM of the Metronome would increase exponentially as time passes. Azalea conjures up a two chairs and a small table.

 

10 BPM. It’s very slow.

 

“So what should we call it?” Ambrose asks.

“I was thinking we would use the same name from the fanfiction, ‘The Glacier Metronome’.” 

“Eh, it’s okay. I was thinking something like a synonym from the words infinity and life.”

“Hmm. For “infinity”, maybe eternal? You can do the “life” aspect of it. I don’t mind.” Azalea's not being normal. She's supposed to be cold, locked in. Maybe the journey changed her?

“‘Animation’? ‘Spirit’? ‘Being’? ‘Existence’?” Ambrose suggested. To be honest, he wasn’t really creative at all, just bouncing around synonyms around in his head. English never really came to him, unlike Azalea. Ambrose was more into math and arithmetic.

“‘Eternal Animation’? No, doesn’t sound right.”

“‘Eternal Spirit’? Too...over the top.”

“Yeah, I agree. Maybe ‘Eternal Movement’?”

“That sounds good!”

 

100 BPM. The beats are getting faster. Looks like it’s doing it’s job.

 

“Do you have the Jade Frog and the Clockwork Hammer?” Azalea speaks.

“Yeah, I do.” Ambrose pulls out the frog and the hammer, and sets it down on the table. He likes the Clockwork Hammer better than the Jade Frog. He could get lost in the gears, always turning eternally. He could stare at it for hours and never get bored. The Jade Frog, on the other hand, looked like it was jade but is actually really damp to the touch. Ambrose doesn't know how Azalea stands it, cradling it in her arms like her baby.

 

“So how are we supposed to activate the three?”

“Well, we can try making the bomb explode at the exact moment the Metronome hits infinity. We can also shatter the Jade Frog with the Fire Hammer during the explosion.”

“Not the way I would do it, but whatever works.

 

1,000 BPM. Wow! That’s really fast. Azalea looks at the Metronome, seeing it swing back and forth faster and faster, narrower and narrower as the weight slides down, down, down.

 

“...I’m scared, to be honest.” Ambrose spoke truthfully.

“On a scale of 1 to 10?”

“11.”

“I see. What are you scared about?” Azalea never really liked playing the role of therapist, she hated psychoanalysis.

“Well, what if it’s a trap? What if we got it all wrong? What if this trip was a failure? What is we never needed to set out on our quest? What if the Mechanisms are just normal objects?” A drop of sweat trickled down his back, then absorbed by his thin clothing. He never really gave this trip much thought. He was quite the naive one back then.

“The Mechanisms aren’t normal objects. They were scattered throughout the universe. The Jade Frog hops around. The Hammer gives off a slight heat, but is cool to the touch. And the Movement? It gets exponentially faster as time progresses.”

 

3,000 BPM. It’s not really a ticking anymore, but a dull vibrating sound. Bzzzzzt. The sound fills both of their ears, but they don’t mind. They _are_ saving the universe, after all.

 

“And what if we don’t survive? What then, Azalea?” He’s becoming angry now, irrationally angry, at himself, at her, at everything leading up to his pitiful existence.  ~~You think he shouldn't get mad. At least he doesn't have to discover the remains of the Metronome. At least he didn't have to leave his timeline. At least he didn't have to sacrifice himself for the life of another naive person in another universe that can bear fruit. At least he didn't give up his happiness for the safety and life of others. At least he doesn't have to sacrifice everything he had and will have in a last ditch effort. At least he still has his life. At least he still has Azalea.~~

“Then that’s it. We get wiped from existence, save the universe in the process, and be happy that we saved the human race.”

“But I can’t be happy if I don’t exist!”

 

The countdown stops at 00:05. How strange. Shouldn’t it countdown more? It appears that the duo have not realized that the timer has stopped.

 “Just think of the future, Ambrose. Think of all the little children around Earth, all surviving because we gave them a second chance. Think of the teenagers. They don’t know that they were saved by us, but why should we care? And think of the older generations. They got a chance to live, to share their stories with the children.” Her voice is soft now, no longer sarcastic or scornful like earlier.

 

~~Earlier. It’s been a long time since “earlier”. How long ago was earlier? You don’t really know, because you’ve never really kept track of Azalea’s and Ambrose’s litle adventure, scouring the universe. You guess about a few months? Probably? Well, the flow of time is a little unreliable in Vitae, so it’s a bit hard to tell.~~

 

“...”

“So what’s better, Ambrose? Two god-like humans, the only ones in a desolate universe, or 7 billion normal humans that have a chance to live in a fertile universe?”

“I guess that would be the 7 billion mortal humans that would have a chance to live.”

“Right, Ambrose. You should know this by now.”  ~~The Azalea of this timeline seems to be wiser, more thoughtful in her actions. But that doesn't mean you favor her over your sister. Hell no, that would be stupid.~~

“...I still want to live, though. I just want some friends.”

 ~~Friends. You've never really had friends. It was just you at school, drifting along with no real sense of direction. You already knew the material, but they were determined to drill wrong ideas and motives into your brain, molding you into the "perfect" student. You obliged for the first half of 8th grade, but realized that what they were teaching you was wrong. Before that eye~~ - ~~opening moment, you were the popular one, and people respected you. But after the moment, your teachers caught notice. They were determined to make your life a living hell. You sought the principal and vice principal for advice, but they turned you away. They already knew. And things just went downhill from that. One of the teachers leaked the information to a mass of gossipers, and the rumor spread around the school like wildfire. So it was you against the entire school.~~

~~So you took up writing as an outlet. The only teacher determined to stop this madness was surprisingly your English teacher, Mr. Firenze. You've never really liked him, as he would always glare at you, but after the incident, he took you under his wing.~~

~~You've always liked every aspect of him. His chiseled face, strong, muscular arms, his eyes always clear. You also liked his personality after the incident. He was always glaring at the other students, but when it came to you, he was always nice.~~

~~You harbored a crush on him, as he wasn't married. But he wasn't gay, or bi for that matter. Perfectly straight.~~

“Me too, bro.”  ~~Bro...?~~

A tear trails down Ambrose’s smooth face, down, down, down, until it falls on the table.

Wait. What did Azalea say earlier?  ~~Azalea said "Bro", idiot. Did you not hear her speak that? Or was it because you were too busy indulging in your powers controlling this story?~~

“Wait, did you call me ‘bro’?” Azalea nods, and a smile breaks out on both of their faces, and they laugh. They laugh and laugh and laugh, until their tummies hurt from burning too many calories.

 

1,000,000 BPS. You heard me. Seconds. The beat is no more than white noise at this point.

 

Once they’re done laughing, Azalea walks over to Ambrose. She hugs him, and he hugs back, with equal force. They hug for what seem like millennia. They only break apart when they see that the Movement is nearing infinity and the bomb is at 00:01. One second left.

“So this is it?” Ambrose asks weakly.

“This is it.” Azalea responds firmly.

Rogue goes silent in Ambrose’s head.  ~~You go silent in Ambrose's head. The final countdown starts up, ticking in Ambrose's mind.~~

Azalea keeps watch over the bomb. Ambrose holds the hammer over the frog.

 

‘Showtime.’ Maid says, almost encouragingly. Her voice has a bit of feeling to it, but Azalea doesn’t notice.

  


The Cardinal Eternal Movement hits Infinity, and the pendulum stays still. The buzz is nonexistent, but it sends out pulse after pulse of energy, invisible to the naked eye. The duo’s surroundings are suddenly blotched with white spots. They feel their surroundings feel heavy, thick, laced with dread. Ambrose’s heart beats in his chest, but he knows this is the final countdown. He brings the Hammer goes down, down, down smashing the Jade Frog just as soon as the Movement sends a huge shockwave of energy out, reaching towards the outer edges of space. The bomb goes off, and

  
  
  


everything

  
  
  
  
  


                                    goes

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
                                                                                                                                        ~~black.~~ white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't understand, I will add a chapter at the end explaining what happened.


End file.
